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Turning Vintage Furniture Into A Crank Powered Synthesizer: The Digital Music Box

Imagine a powerful bass sound system, rhythmically pulsing multiple laser beams into the night sky, as revelers take turns to churn out the tunes. This isn’t some secret rave party in the countryside, we are deep in the heart of Braga, Portugal.

Imaginando ­a local tech startup, is encouraging people to ‘crank out’ everything from Mozart to Metallica, on its latest creation.

Inspired by classic music boxes, this super­sized, digital version features the same crank­based control but uses a custom set of micro­computers to turn the input into a music and light show, with all the charm and character of its vintage styling.

Onboard is Imaginando’s very own cross­platform, virtual polyphonic synthesizer ‘DRC’ running super­smoothly on a Raspberry Pi, with the high fidelity audio it deserves from the additional Pisound card by Blokas.

For the developers of popular mobile apps DRC, LK and TKFX, Imaginando’s 3rd anniversary proved to be a defining moment, as June came to a close. Releasing new versions of every product in their portfolio, a real crescendo of hard work and energy transcended into a rare moment of reflection, as founder and CEO Nuno Santos explains:

“We had worked hard for 3 years, developing products that inspire people to maximize their creative productivity, but even when you do what you love, if you start acting like a robot, just completing the same tasks every day, you can feel depleted.”

Not content with just the challenge of the project, to take it one step further, a “step outside their comfort zone”, the entire process would be documented, as it happened, with a series of video diaries on both YouTube and Facebook.

A celebration of this journey of discovery, the emotive Digital Music Box ­’The Premiere’ video provides a beautiful snapshot of a moment Imaginando will never forget.